Mind My Brains, Darling! Season 1

Goodnight Princess Omnibus (Acts 1-3)

Interview with Felicia Day

We’ve been friends with the Standard Action crew for quite a while and meet up several times a year at various events. Last year Rob Hunt joined us for Celebrate The Web 6 and was fantastic as Director of Photography and Assistant Director. Rob really raised our game and it was a pleasure working with him. We also had the opportunity to return the favour, working as background (extras) on episode 3 of Season 2:

The team are very friendly and professional (as you would expect) and we had an excellent day. Knowing how hard it is to keep everything going, we tried to stay well away from the shooting until our debut, just in case we interfered with any shots. We hung out, enjoying the ambiance and the fact we were not the ones worried about lights, cameras and action for once. And not having to worry about BodyLine for our shots. In fact, we were almost inverse BodyLine, with only our heads showing 🙂

The attention to detail and thought behind every shot, costume and line is obvious in the finished product. What you don’t see (but which is probably equally obvious) is that Standard Action is a well-oiled machine. A well-oiled machine that has great craft service and a crew that genuinely enjoys working with each other.

Make sure you check out the Standard Action website to catch all the other episodes and find out where the team will be appearing this year.

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It’s hard to believe it has been a year since we were last at VCON! What a blast we had for two weeks when Paul Best, Laura Olson and Angela Aro came up for a VCON and Girl Geek Con. We did several panels and screenings and meet some amazing people.

We were sorry to miss VCON in 2012 but from all accounts it was another fun and successful event. Hopefully we’ll be back in 2013.

Paul B has edited some of the footage from last year and released it on Vimeo – enjoy!

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Dr Horrible has been back in the news recently. EW reported that Dr Horrible is going to be aired on TV on Tuesday, Oct. 9 at 9 p.m. on The CW channel and the @drhorrible Twitter account has started tweeting again. It was widely reported during SD Comic Con that Dr Horrible 2 is going to happen, but there was no dates given because of timetabling the main stars.

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It was another fun show with April and Amanda on Indie Intertube last night. Special guests were Jenni, Stuart and Logan, organisers of Celebrate The Web 6: Levelling Up. With some great prizes on offer and a wide assortment of videos in the mix, it was not clear which of the videos would win the prizes. In the end, the robots won the day, with the Judges Prize going to ‘The Belle and the Bot’ and the Audience Choice going to ‘Political Machine’. Full details on celebratetheweb.com.

Our Team BREW entry for Celebrate The Web 6: Levelling Up was ‘This Human Body‘. It was written, filmed, and edited in 7 days. After leaving it for a couple of weeks it is interesting to go back and watch it again. Working with Rob was a great experience and on the whole I’m really pleased with how it turned out. A few people have commented on the editing, and this interests me. I can see where it could be tightened here and there, but I’m not sure I’m seeing what other people are seeing. We’d love to hear from you about that.

But why this story?
The story itself was literally written in 4 hours, start to finish. It was one of those times when it really does write itself. Once I saw the quote, I knew what I wanted to write about, and that was that. I shut down every tab and app on my computer apart from Scrivener, and set to it. We knew we had wanted to do a drama, and we wanted it to be meaningful. Following David as he navigates the first few hours after he gets a terminal diagnosis was a way to explore his character, relationships and choices. We also wanted to set up the potential for a series while making the pilot a satisfying video as a standalone.

Who is David, and why should we care?
David is successful, seemingly rich and possibly not a nice guy. He is separated from his wife, Wendy, and daughter, Jessica, for reasons we don’t find out in the first episode. We get the impression that the split was not without acrimony. Wendy is first dismissive, then hostile, angry, and finally speechless. Jessica simply loves her dad. Is he going to go through any treatment? Will he be reunited with his family? Does it work out? Will he die alone? Will he eventually realise that the iPad can be held in landscape mode?

What did we cut out?
There was a whole thread we had to abandon due to time and filming constraints. In it David speaks to his geek friend, Josh, who is more concerned about an upcoming Con than anything else. Until David breaks the news. We also cut some dialogue between David and Jessica because it didn’t work in reality as well as it did on paper. If you are interested you can read the original script here.

Why did we enter Celebrate The Web 6?
When Kim and Jenni first talked about doing something after the 2010 Streamy Awards, I was 100% behind them, and offered to help. I was upset about the whole thing and really wanted to show my support for the community. Since then, Celebrate the Web has grown into a very inclusive, exciting competition that is open to everyone. We’ve thought about entering before, but the time has never really worked, especially as ‘Mind My Brains, Darling!‘ took up more than a year of production. This year, funding being what it is, we will probably not do a major production under the HigletFilms banner but we wanted to do something. CTW6 was perfect – it would all be done and dusted in a week, and we had Rob as Director of Photography and AD, huge jobs that we didn’t have to worry about. Megan Lynch helped with input about the music and the one page, too. Having people to help makes a HUGE difference!

We watched every entry and enjoyed nearly all of them on one level or other. We were clearly not the demographic for many of them. There has been quite a lot of discussion around about whether some entries were really up to standard. I understand where people are coming from, but I absolutely, 100% think that CTW should stay like it is and allow EVERYONE and ANYONE to participate. Yes, there were some entries that were very rough around the edges, but I know there were people trying this for the first time. I wouldn’t want anyone to be put off because they weren’t ‘good enough’. It’s a competition. The ones that aren’t ‘good enough’ won’t win. Hopefully everyone who took part learned a lot from it, had fun doing it, and made some new connection. And that brings me on to a very important point:

But what about those that don’t win? I would like to think that everyone learned a great deal, for a start. I know we did. Just completing a project like this is an achievement. You only really learn about things by doing them, and this is especially true for making video. I’d also like to offer some constructive feedback to any of the entries (winners or not) who want it. Just email me or leave a comment here, and I’ll send you a little overview that you can do what you like with.

To the CTW team for organising CTW6 – Jenni, Stuart and Logan – a huge THANK YOU!

On Tubefilter yesterday it was announced that the Audience Choice and Judges’s Choice winning pilots of the Celebrate The Web 6: Level Up will be announced LIVE during the Indie Intertube podcast on June 6th. I try to tune in to April and Amanda every week because they always have the very latest information about what’s going on in the webseries world, and their shows are informative as well as very entertaining.

Voting for the Audience Choice is open now, and you can vote once a day until May 31st by visiting celebratetheweb.com. Cleverly, the voting page updates with the pilots in a different order each time, so scroll down if you don’t see the one you want straight away:

'This Human Body' from Team BREW on celebratetheweb.com

We teamed up with Rob Hunt from Phase Fire Films to form Team BREW, and our pilot ‘This Human Body’ is a moving drama about David facing up to his mortality and his past. Megan Lynch was our production assistant and Rebecca also starred in the pilot. You can watch it on YouTube:

If you enjoy it please vote for us! It only takes a second and you don’t even have to register.

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Voting opens TODAY for the Celebrate The Web. You can vote once per day and voting ends on May 31st. Out of 25 teams who entered, there are 15 pilots to watch. We watched a few last night and there are some very imaginative takes on the three elements!

Our Team BREW entry, ‘This Human Body‘, is on the page so please scroll down and vote for us! It’s a powerful drama about a man facing up to his mortality and his past. You can see the pilot here, too:

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After a few last minute technical glitches we uploaded to YouTube late last night and submitted all our documentation to Celebrate The Web and Audiosocket in time for the deadline of 10 AM this morning. So Team BREW are officially in CTW6!

So…what have we been working on for the last week? Well, it’s something very different to ‘Mind My Brains, Darling!‘. Entitled ‘This Human Body’, it is a powerful drama about a man who has to face up to his mortality and his past. You might need your kleenex:

And now, HUGE THANK YOUS to some people who have really made the difference in getting this film made:

Rob Hunt: who is a fantastic DP and brought so much to the filming. We learned a huge amount and can’t wait to work with Rob again. Check out Rob’s other work at Phasefirefilms.com and watchstandardaction.comMegan Lynch: Production Assistant. Megan stepped in to help me with music selection and with some really good perspectives on the pilot and webseries descriptions. And she really helped to keep me on track when things got a little out of hand. Support an indie artist and buy Megan’s album here: http://meganlynch.bandcamp.com/Rebecca Higgins: Actor. She was so much fun and good natured through all the takes we did. #cuteextremeOur family: The rest of the family have been really supportive and helpful throughout this last week and that makes such a huge difference. Thanks, you guys!

After a packed weekend of shooting our ‘Celebrate The Web’ (CTW6) pilot, thought I’d take a little time out to post a couple of pics and let you know how it’s going for Team BREW. We did all the filming in 2 days and now we are editing and sorting out music and all the post production things that need to be done.

A HUGE thank you to Rob Hunt for coming over on Sunday. Having Rob as Director of Photography really taken things to the next level for us. His vast experience with Standard Action and his other works was invaluable and gave us a new perspective on things. Plus, it was great fun even in the incredible heat.

We are also going to be announcing the other members of Team BREW later, people who have stepped in to really help out with all the post work that needs to be done at short notice. Thank you!!!

I’m not going to give anything away about the pilot itself. This is something new, and we think it will totally [censored] your [censored] off. Paul’s suggested motto for Team BREW: